3 ms·
I understand the desire to make it humane. But killing someone is not particularly humane in the first place. You also have to wonder about whether it’s worth
by Swizec 8y ago
I understand the desire to make it humane. But killing someone is not particularly humane in the first place.
You also have to wonder about whether it’s worth making killing someone super humane since, you know, they’re gonna die anyway. So they have an unpleasant few seconds, or perhaps minutes, and then they’re dead.
I mean, they just suffered some 10 years or more of imprisonment, often solitary, which is extremely inhumane in general. What’s 2 more minutes?
That said, we have plenty of fast and humane execution methods that are hard to botch. Most involve a swift disabling of the brain stem.
Like a bullet to the back of the neck, hanging, guillotine, that long nail thing they use for cows.
All those seem easier, cheaper, more reliable, and faster than these lethal injection and electric chair contraptions.
But surely I must be missing something important.
- sokoloff 8y agoIt always struck me as odd that for lethal injection, the medical staff sterilized the needle site before hooking up the line.
- mikeash 8y agoThe governor might issue a pardon before you actually inject the drug.
- jjoonathan 8y agoIt has nothing to do with being humane and everything to do with appearing humane and, even more importantly, avoiding association with otherwise extremely similar killing. Shooting prisoners in the head would be humane, but it would invite comparison to terrorists, revolutionaries, and other unsavories. However warranted the comparisons are, dressing up executions in medical nonsense avoids them, so our government does it.
- function_seven 8y agoAgreed. Yet they somehow manage to over-complicate the medical dressing up.